Rome:
A Sicilian priest stunned his congregation by announcing during a mass that he would soon be a father and was quitting to marry his partner, Italian media reported on Friday.
"It's my last mass. I am in love with a woman and in a few months I will be a father," Vito Lombardo, 33, told his flock in the city of Trapani in northwestern Sicily, local newspapers said.
The relationship had been going on for a while, but the priest waited until his partner was five months pregnant before announcing his departure, the reports said.
According to the Giornale di Sicilia daily, Lombardo tipped off the Vatican about his decision to marry before announcing it to his parishioners.